CanadianTory's Test Thread

[CanadianTory]

Being Leader of Her Majesty's Official Opposition is a pretty sweet gig. Your primary job is making fun of the government, which is pretty easy considering that as the Official Opposition you're likely already ideologically opposed to just about everything the government says and does. You get a pay bump on top of your standard pay as a Member of Parliament, get to live in public housing, and you get an excellent seat in the House of Commons. Problem is, if you're Leader of the Opposition that also means that your party probably lost the most recent election, the press will be more than eager to remind you and Canadians of the various reasons why your party ended up in there (rather than simply keeping the government accountable), and being in opposition carries with it many of the same headaches of government minus any of the benefits of power. Keeping those obstacles in mind, since Confederation only fifteen Leaders of the Opposition managed to get themselves promoted to the top job in Canadian politics, the most recent being Tom Mulcair. Jason Kenney - disciplined, hard-working, fiercely intelligent, and one of Harper's best fixers in cabinet - wanted to be the sixteenth.

By 2015 most voters had decided that Stephen Harper was too angry, too reclusive, and too out-of-touch with the rest of the country. With the election having handed the New Democrats only fifteen more seats than the Tories however, conventional thinking suggested that the Conservatives didn't have to reinvent the wheel when it came to the policies on offer, they simply had to rejig they way in which they offered them. Tone is important in Canadian politics, at least important enough that Stephen Harper worked really hard on it back when his party was winning elections. He'd just slap on a sweater vest, pretend to mingle with Canadian families, and occasionally smile. Just human enough to reassure voters. Jason Kenney's selling proposition as Conservative Party leader was that he could offer the kind of Harper-continuation that the base wanted, but appeal to swing voters and minority groups that had abandoned the party in the previous campaign. Many within the party had credited Kenney's outreach to various minority groups historically sympathetic to the Liberals to the Conservative's success leading up to and including their majority victory in 2011. According to Kenney, that winning coalition of voters could easily be replicated again, just so long as the party didn't veer too far into the kind of extreme rhetoric that it had begun to dabble with during and after the election. Unless the Conservatives led on pocketbook issues, they would only lose more ground to the NDP. Part of that makeover involved the new 'Shadow cabinet' and leadership team to take on the government during Question Period. Lisa Raitt, who finished fourth in the leadership race that elected Kenney, was named as the party's new Deputy in the hopes that pairing the single and relationship-less Kenney with a woman from Ontario would help make the new leader more appealing to voters. Erin O'Toole, the party's former interim leader who won accolades from party MPs and insiders for his ability to keep the various factions of the party united during his brief stint as head of the party, was named Foreign Affairs critic against Megan Leslie. Leading the charge against Finance Minister Nathan Cullen would be Gerard Deltell, the former leader of the now-defunct Action démocratique du Québec, who was also subsequently named as the new leader's Quebec Lieutenant. As a consolation for missing out on the finance portfolio, Max Bernier would instead get assigned to shadow Alexandre Boulerice and Kenney's old job in Employment. Several other new faces, like Parm Gill, Effie Triantafilopoulos, and Dianne Watts also received promotions. A clear attempt to appease both moderates and the more right-wing base of the party. Trouble was that many in the base of the party, including those who had voted for Kenney, weren't exactly interested in pursuing the Stephen Harper strategy of incrementalism and restraint. They and their activist friends had felt abandoned by Harper, and were eager to push the party in a more ideological direction.

There was also the fact that defeating a government after a single term in power is a tough ask under even the best of circumstances. Canadians are usually willing to give the new government time and the benefit of the doubt. Even Stephen Harper needed at least two kicks at the can to take down Paul Martin, and his premiership could be best described as a deer in the headlights. The last government to fail to get re-elected under the leader who had gotten them elected in the first place was Joe Clark way back in 1979. Tom Mulcair had his own share of flaws, but he had more in common with Brian Mulroney than Clark, so the comparison was largely moot aside from the expected chatter about the longevity of a new federal NDP government. Tory spin to the contrary, the New Democrats had (for the time being) united firmly behind Mulcair's pragmatic progressive strategy, and aside from a few hiccups like Veterans Minister Peter Stoffer's overly touchy behaviour, had avoided big scandals.

Then there was the media. Conservatives had long made distrusting the media and their journalistic emissaries a cornerstone of their movement. The whole lot of them were Liberal sympathizers. When pressed to explain how they knew that, Tories would just point at journalists blatant admiration of Justin Trudeau. It was just so obvious. Jason Kenney was as close to Harper as anyone in the party could get, but he was always more comfortable than his boss in his handling of the media. Much as he had as a minister of the Crown, Kenney engaged in long scrums with reporters, eschewing the former Prime Minister's preference for only answering five questions per day from the media. Like the fictional Arnold Vinick from the American political drama the West Wing, the Tory leader would routinely answer question after question until journalists simply ran out of things to ask him. Problem was that Kenney, who could exhibit charisma at times, was still at his heart a policy wonk, and suffered from delivering overlong answers that often failed to make it into the evening political recaps over at CTV or the CBC. When Kenney tried to stick to message, he would get ridiculed for refusing to offer more detail. Catch twenty-two.

Kenney's response to all this? A little more Ralph Klein and less Stephen Harper. King Ralph (as he was commonly referred to in the press) was a politician of the people, unafraid to make cuts to the public sector, pay down the debt, and speak bluntly about issues facing Alberta. He was happy to become the villain for environmentalists or Chretien's Ottawa, and Albertans rewarded him for it, electing him to four consecutive majority governments and the longest stint as Premier since Peter Lougheed. Kenney wanted to take that sensible populist blueprint and apply it nationally. Gone were the suits and ties that had been the style for much of his previous two decades in Ottawa, and in their place were blue jeans, rolled up sleeves, and the blue pickup truck ablaze with the Conservative Party logo. Cue mockery from the Laurentian media in the Ottawa bubble. It didn't matter whether it was a prayer breakfast in Kitchener, a Sikh event in downtown Toronto, a rodeo in Calgary, or a policy announcement in Vancouver, Kenney would pull up in his truck wearing blue jeans, all smiles. He'd claim that the NDP were prisoners to environmental extremists, that Mulcair was punishing the energy sector and taxpayers. Canada wasn't the largest green house gas emitter in the world, so why did it make sense that Canadians had to pay the price to cut their carbon footprint when places like China or the United States refused to play by the same rules? If you asked Kenney and the Tories, that kind of logic didn't make any sense. In a lot of ways the Tory strategy began to mimic that of the BC Liberal Party under Gordon Campbell and Christy Clark; a party of free-enterprise and pipelines versus a party of socialism and bloated bureaucracy. To the reluctance of some within the party, the Conservatives even appeared poised to adopt a carbon 'levy' that punished major emitters, with the money raised going towards a green technology fund. Not enough to please environmentalists, but certainly a more credible approach that other conservatives were advocating (Which amounted, quite frankly, to do nothing).

In this way Jason Kenney's leadership of the Conservative Party was not that dissimilar from that of Prime Minister Mulcair's of the New Democrats. Both parties were built on an ideologically motivated base of volunteers that scared the crap out of most voters. Whereas the NDP had to deal with union leaders, socialists, environmentalists, and maybe the odd communist here and there, the Tories had to deal with social conservatives, the religious right, homophobes, climate-deniers, and conspiracy theorists. The job was to keep those motivated volunteers in the tent but make sure the average Canadian never saw heads or tails of them. Who else was going to man the phone lines, mail out donation requests, and nail-in the campaign signs for the local party candidate? Certainly not the other ninety-eight percent of Canadians who didn't go out and buy a membership with a political party. They have better things to do. So, like Stephen Harper before him, Kenney threw the odd piece of red meat to the base, like on tax cuts for families who homeschooled their kids or for the inclusion of anti-abortion groups in Canada's summer job program. If there were any grumbles from within the tent, Kenney could just point out that he had received a historic mandate from the membership for his leadership. He had won on the fifth ballot in an eight candidate race, beating his closest competitor by thirty-points. You had to go all the way back to the 1942 PC leadership race that elected the populist John Bracken for anything remotely similar in conservative politics. He'd never legislate on issues like abortion or same-sex marriage, and hoped that the movement's desire for revenge against the New Democrats would be enough to keep the party united going into the next federal campaign. Six months out from having won the job, Kenney's leadership was still stuck. For all of his work, Canadians didn't appear to be responding to the party, and poll after poll placed the Tories firmly in the mid-to-high twenties, with government well ahead. Not exactly a ringing endorsement. Unless Kenney turned things around, his time as leader of the Conservative Party seemed poised to end much the same as Bracken's; defeated by a popular government that he decried as socialist and rendered a footnote in the history books.

 

[CanadianTory]

 

[CanadianTory]

Ironically sitting on the floor below the office used by the Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, the Prime Minister’s Centre Block office is also a step down when it comes to style. For example, it lacks the frescoes and the fireplace that immediately grabs your attention. It’s a lot less spacious too, and doesn’t enjoy the same stellar view of downtown Ottawa. But like so many others before him, Harper included, Tom Mulcair opted for symbolism over functionality. Besides, as Canada’s first ever New Democratic Prime Minister, it was doubly important to appear as conventional in the job as possible, and that meant embracing humility (or humiliation depending on who you asked) and moving into a cramped office space. Canada's first ever New Democratic government spent a lot of its time bragging about its election being proof of voter's rejection of Harperism and a turning of a page to a more positive brand of politics, but when you looked closer some of the old foundations of the Harper regime were still there. To be sure, there were plenty of differences between Tom Mulcair and his immediate predecessor in the job. For example, Ottawa was definitely back in the business of "buying change', a favoured Chretien-era euphonism for blackmailing provinces into compliance. Or, in Mulcair's case, cajoling them through largely popular policies. For many that alone was more provincial outreach than the last guy ever bothered to try. But as Mulcair settled into the job as Prime Minister, it was hard to ignore that there were at least a few similarities between him and Stephen Harper. Like Harper, Mulcair had found success partly by appealing to middle-class voters who valued a more forceful style in communications. If someone was going to throw a punch, the Prime Minister was going to punch back, and hard. Mulcair also wasn't considered the warmest guy in his party, and could be accused of being highly combative, stubborn, and outright controlling of his caucus. Sound familiar? Some in the press gallery even joked that all Tom Mulcair was doing was selling a combination of orange-tinted Harperism, NDP optimism, mixed in with a much more Liberal approach to spending. Luckily for the NDP, polls showed that voters were alright with that.

A common phrase used by the new government was that "transparency takes time," or "we’re following due process,". Everyone knew that was shorthand for "we don't have the votes at this time,". Minority governments are shackled by the truest law of politics; arithmetic. At only one-hundred-and-thirty-four seats in the House of Commons (39.9 percent of its seats), thirty-six seats shy of an outright majority, the New Democrats also had the distinction of being the smallest minority government in Canadian history, besting Stephen Harper's record back in 2006 in a smaller parliament. That meant that if the NDP were to prove they were competent enough to get anything done, they needed a dance partner. Almost seventy percent of Canadians did not vote for Mulcair and the NDP. But over fifty percent had voted for them and the Liberals, who weren't exactly eager to go straight back into an election campaign with their leader's blackface scandal still fresh in the minds of many voters. Where the government could largely act on its own, like calling a national inquiry into murdered and missing Indigenous women or cancelling the Keystone XL pipeline, it would. Where they needed support to pass major legislation that were matters of confidence, like a national carbon tax, they offered concessions and turned to Trudeau and the Liberals for support. Everything else, like their childcare plan, abolishing the Senate, or their promise to reform Canada's electoral system, would have to wait. Studies and consultation with the opposition and provincial governments take time, after all. Or at least that was the line they'd feed to journalists, before shifting gears and began citing all the data showing the progress they had made on countless other files. Death by oversaturation, as it was quickly dubbed by the press, who were more than a little surprised to find the NDP embracing such tactics.

The last set of comments that Justin Trudeau would deliver to the 42nd Parliament lasted an entire five minutes. In the final Question Period before the House adjourned for its summer break, the Liberal leader rose to declare how disappointed he was in the Prime Minister and the New Democrats. He humbly praised his own party's efforts to help the government shepherd some of its well meaning (A.K.A. "popular with voters") legislation through the chamber, but lamented the fact that it didn't appear to have the chops nor the nerve to do more for Canadians. Tough talk considering this was coming from the leader of the party that had once held a nigh-unbreakable hold on power for much of the 20th century. Problem was that these days the words of the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada carried a lot less weight than his predecessors, since for the second parliament in a row they were in third place. To many Liberal partisans this was an affront to the natural order of Canadian politics. Their leader was charming, handsome, charismatic, and everything that they thought Canadians should have in their Prime Minister. If it hadn't been for a few overzealous journalists eager to make a name for themselves, Trudeau, like his father before him, would sit in the Prime Minister's office, likely doing a much better job than the guy who actually won the job. Trust them, they knew how ordinary Canadians thought. But even the most loyal Liberal insider admitted that the last two years hadn't gone by without problems. Trudeau had banked the 2015 campaign on the idea that voters wanted bold action, pledging to go deep into deficit spending to finance a long list of goodies and promises. When that didn't work, partly thanks to those overzealous journalists finding evidence of Trudeau's use of blackface in his youth, the rest of the Liberal's rhetoric fell flat. It's tough to position yourself as an agent of change against a Prime Minister with a rocky relationship with the media when you're either barking at reporters or ignoring them altogether. Things hadn't improved in opposition, which Justin Trudeau was ill-suited for. The New Democrats had control of the agenda, and were stealing moves straight out of the Trudeau's playbook. If the Liberals and Trudeau were to recapture momentum and outflank the government from the left, they couldn't exactly been seen to oppose the government's childcare agenda, it's national drug plan, or its carbon tax legislation. More and more reporters were asking the very legitimate question of why would Canadians want a Liberal government if the New Democrats were already implementing most of their key policy proposals? Trudeau would smile wanly, and offer some convoluted argument that the Liberals might do the same thing if in power, only better. Then he would ramble on a bit more.

When Stephen Harper took over the Canadian Alliance in 2002, the party was a joke. When Tom Mulcair decided he'd had enough of provincial politics, he joined the NDP, which had never won a seat in Quebec. They both understood the hills they had to climb and the fights they'd have to win if they were going to make it. Trudeau, without the sense of inevitability, looked listless.

On the flipside, the Tories and their new leader were energetic to the point of almost looking manic. Jason Kenney was probably the best well-known quality out of the three major-party leaders, and had spent almost all his time since becoming leader trying to remedy that fact. Every politician tries to reinvent themselves at some point in their career. Stephen Harper tried to shed his image as an ideological firebrand into a sweater-wearing dad you'd see hanging out at Tim Horton's. Justin Trudeau and his team launched a counter-campaign trying to shift the narrative that he was in fact ready to be Prime Minister. He was still working on that. Paul Martin successfully went from being perceived as the man most prepared to lead the country to being a deer in the headlights once he actually got the job. Kenney wanted to ditch the suit and tie and instead cast himself as the blue jean-wearing everyman. A little less Bay Street and a bit more Ralph Klein. Maybe you wouldn't want to have a drink with him, but you'd be alright with him running the shop while you were out. He'd drive around in his Tory blue pickup truck, shake hands with supporters, chat about how tough it had supposedly gotten under the radical tax-and-spend NDP government, then pack up his act and move on to the next town. Rinse and repeat. For Kenney and his team, the consistency of the message was key. If the Conservative's weren't focused on the NDP, many within the party feared it would collapse into its foundational components. The only thing the Tories hated more than the different factions within their own party was the idea of socialists running the country and undoing all the good that Stephen Harper had accomplished. Jason Kenney would sell himself as a champion of free enterprise, and hope to god that the country ignored the rest of his party.

All elections are about leadership, to a greater or lesser extent. Stockwell Day or Robert Stanfield were full of tough talk and employed some pretty smart strategists, but neither man ever ended up at 24 Sussex. Jean Chretien and Pierre Trudeau, for all their arrogance and imperfections, were just better leaders. They could speak the same language as the people they wanted to govern. Competence always wins with voters. For the New Democrats, this was at the heart of their Regular-Folks Initiative. The 2015 election had been won primarily thanks to Mulcair's strong performance (Or Trudeau's disastrous performance, depending on who you asked) as the main alternative to Stephen Harper and the Conservatives. Voters wanted change, and by the end of the campaign the NDP leader was the last man standing. This time NDP strategists knew that if the party was to win on its own merits and capture a majority, it would have to do so on the backs of "folks", namely those voters who'd agree that something had to be done about climate change, just so long as it didn't cost them an arm and a leg for the federal government to get it done. Typically the Conservatives had that an almost exclusive-hold on that segment, thanks to Stephen Harper's almost effortless ability to frustrate academics and economists. So, the New Democrats now found themselves in the almost impossible situation of trying to appeal to those academics and university-degree voters that made up the core of urban centers like Toronto and Vancouver, while also reaching out to voters in Swift Current, Saskatchewan and North Bay, Ontario. Their advantage? They were now the incumbents. They didn't have to outfox the Liberals as the main alternative to the Conservatives this time. They already had. All they had to do was keep that status quo going. So when Tom Mulcair stood in front of a crowd in Montreal, a pep in his step and a grin on his face, pledging a billion dollars for affordable childcare, people listened. It wasn't a hypothetical argument anymore for the New Democrats. When he promised indigenous leaders in Nunavut that the NDP would both create a national council to implement the findings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and appoint an Indigenous Canadian as the next Governor General, they believed him. All voters needed to do to make those progressive policies a reality was to vote NDP. In the leader's debate Mulcair stared right into the camera (another borrow tactic from Harper) and told voters not to get distracted by the Liberals. The NDP were already here. In power. Why make the change now? If you didn't want to vote for tolerant, progressive policies, he'd say, Jason Kenney was right there. It was either the NDP, moving Canada forward, or the Tories, who'd move the country back. The Liberals weren't even a part of the debate. Trudeau could bang his fist all he wanted, and complain about doing more than the New Democrats if he were in charge. But at the end of the day the NDP was still doing more, and a wide range of issues, than the last guy. For a lot of progressives, that was enough.

For their English-language election campaign slogan the Liberals settled on "Change for Better". Neither really seemed to apply to the party or their leader, but instead to many Liberal insider's hopes for their electoral fortunes. Problem was, those fortunes were still intertwined with their leader's personal brand. Justin Trudeau didn't do shakeups when it came to himself, so much of his inner circle and campaign staff remained unchanged from the 2015 campaign. But this wasn't the 2015 campaign. Justin Trudeau was not the fresh faced unknown that Canadians could pin their aspirations and imaginations on (Despite being seventeen years younger than Tom Mulcair and three years younger than Jason Kenney). He was more experienced, having now served almost a decade in parliament. Had a few more grey hairs. His speeches had begun to sound a bit less optimistic. More importantly, he didn't have Stephen Harper as his foil. Progressive voters weren't exactly happy to see the self-identified feminist leader of the Liberal Party attack another progressive, especially one who was promising and enacting a lot of the same policies that Trudeau himself had supported. They preferred it when Trudeau attacked Jason Kenney and the Tories. But if the Liberals were going to win, they needed to peel off voters from the NDP, and that meant they had to throw a few punches at Tom Mulcair. The Liberals would require provinces to sign-on to their national carbon pricing scheme, rather than giving Conservative-led provinces the opportunity to opt-out, as was the case with the NDP's cap-and-trade scheme. Wanted a stronger economy? Fairer Trade? Trudeau would sit down with President Clinton and resolve all those troublesome differences that Tom Mulcair just couldn't solve. Just as voters were finally starting to listen to the Liberal leader's proposals, rumors began spreading of yet another instance of blackface, this time with a video. It was excruciating for the Liberals. There was their leader, again, wearing blackface, sticking out his tongue in a poor quality video and wearing what seemed to be a t-shirt with bananas on it. Trudeau and his inner circle's reaction was unchanged from 2015. Behind the scenes campaign staffers bemoaned the pesky journalists who were again acting in bad faith. Didn't matter how many meaningful policies the party would offer voters, or how much their boss pledged to change politics for the better, the critics wouldn't let up. Liberal HQ's inability to accept that some of that criticism towards their boss was justified just made them all the nastier. Anyone who even brought up blackface was persona non grata to Team Trudeau, including fellow Liberals. When candidates like New Westminster-Burnaby's Will Davis began to demur when asked whether Trudeau should step down as leader, alarms went off in the Liberal war room and threatening emails were quickly dispatched to quell any potential dissent. Former Northwest Territories Premier Stephen Kakfwi, formerly a staunch ally of Trudeau, wrote an op-ed calling on the Liberal leader to resign, citing his consistent use of blackface unforgivable. Before long journalists and pundits were again discussing what a pre-Election Day resignation would even look like. Were there candidates already waiting in the wings? Was Trudeau actively considering it? What was Jean Chretien's opinion on all of this? Much to the glee of both the Tories and the NDP, it all seemed to coincide at exactly the right time for both of their campaigns.

When he stepped off the Tory campaign bus in Surrey, British Columbia in one of the rare moments without his trademark blue pickup truck, Jason Kenney seemed pretty at ease for a guy who had been trailing the NDP for the last two years (A.K.A. his entire stint as party leader). He read pretty much the same prepared script in both official languages, sprinkled in with a vague pledge to reduce regulations to get more homes built, an extra jab at Prime Minister Mulcair, then waved to his supporters and got back on his bus. Rinse and repeat, again. According to insiders within the Conservative campaign, the hope was that if the message remained consistent, and if Kenney remained laser-focused on job creation, the economy, and Canada's potential as an energy superpower, enough free-enterprise voters would flock to the Tories to keep the New Democrats to yet another minority. Best case scenario? Jason Kenney could even emerge with enough seats to form a minority of his own. But that was a longshot. Tom Mulcair and the New Democrats still had that new car smell, and hadn't been in power long enough to have any meaningful scandals stick to them. Sure, Kenney could criticize Mulcair for appointing a parliamentary science "czar" responsible for $100 million toward helping 25 northern and remote communities, or punish them with overbearing regulations as he put it, but that wasn't ever going to be a winning election issue with voters. The best the Tory leader could do was attack the government's wasteful spending habits, it's refusal to ratify the Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal, and its attempts to bully provinces into buying onto its cap and trade plan to fight climate change. Socialism run amuck. Things were better under the last Conservative government (Just don't mention the guy who was Prime Minister during that nine-year stint unless you were West of Ontario and East of British Columbia). That wasn't to say Jason Kenney's entire strategy was just about keeping the base happy. He was also busy at work trying to mend fences with the nation's multicultural community, a relationship that had been partially strained in the 2015 campaign. That meant interviews on Punjabi radio stations. Visiting Mosques and Synagogues. Touring Chinatown in downtown Toronto. There was even something on offer for environmentalists. Want a real climate plan? The Tories would punish large emitters, not consumers, with a levy and put the revenue towards a green technology fund. Revenue neutral towards voters but still acknowledging there was a problem. Sure, journalists would bemoan the fact that it wasn't a serious plan, but they were going to say that regardless. It showed that Kenney took the issue at least somewhat seriously compared to other leading figures within his party. Preston Manning was even on board. Before long, the bleeding began to stop, and the Tories had stabilized in the polls. Not enough to win, but it was better than the alternative. Some business-friendly Liberals, those types who had thrived under Paul Martin's brief premiership and were terrified at the thought of living under an NDP majority, appeared ready to swallow their pride and do what was once unthinkable; vote Conservative. Still, this was still Jason Kenney, and the social conservative albatross around his neck left a lot of voters uncomfortable with the idea of the guy representing Canada on the world stage.

Enter the minor party leaders. As the only Bloc Quebecois gain of the 2015 campaign, Rheal Fortin was the natural (and only) candidate to take over from Gilles Duceppe, who had returned from retirement as a Hail Mary pass from the sovereignty movement. With a caucus large enough to fill a storage closet on Parliament Hill, the Bloc's decline was a decade in the making. Less and less Quebecers, especially younger, more left-leaning Quebecers, were interested in fighting the battles of Rene Levesque and Jacques Parizeau. By and large they appeared content to remain in Canada, and were put off by debates that boiled down to "sovereignty or bust". But if not independence, what did the Bloc stand for? They could protest pipelines all they wanted, but Tom Mulcair had long beat them to the punch. Fortin could come out and say something outrageous towards English Canada in the hopes of riding the ensuing controversy, but nobody seemed to car. Elizabeth May meanwhile seemed pretty happy considering polls showed her party losing support to the NDP. Maybe it helped being the only Green MP in the House of Commons, or the fact that she faced little real opposition in her Saanich—Gulf Islands riding. Why worry when you had job security? The Greens had long been accused of having become little else than a means to further their leader's own personal career. But Green supporters, or at least those who showed up to cheer May on as she travelled back and forth from her riding, seemed happy with it. Some Green staffers admitted that their strategy amounted to little more than trying to appease the NDP and influence their climate change policies going forward. After all, Elizabeth May was prepared to work with anyone who could help keep her relevant in Canadian politics. Eleven years after first getting elected leader of the party, May showed little interest in going away any time soon.

Spoiler: Map

Canadians tend to give their governments time and considerable benefit of the doubt. Since 1867 only three elected Prime Ministers have experienced defeat after a single victory; Alexander Mackenzie, R.B. Bennett, and poor old Joe Clark. Each of those men also had the distinction of getting bested not by a newcomer, but by the guy they defeated in the first place. Re-election is far more common than defeat in Canadian politics. But Stephen Harper wasn't interested in hanging around Ottawa and making a comeback, despite his honest assessment that he could have stayed Conservative leader with minimal opposition. Some in the party might have even preferred it, given the results on Election Day. Tom Mulcair had entered the campaign as Prime Minister, and he ended it as Prime Minister, bolstered by a not-exactly strong nor stable one-hundred-and-seventy-six-seat majority government.

If the New Democrats were to win, their strategists knew they needed to push up their numbers in British Columbia and Quebec, all while keeping their iron grip on Quebec. They accomplished exactly that. Twenty-eight-seats in B.C., sixty in Ontario, and another sixty-five in Quebec (even better numbers than Mulroney posted in his '88 re-election). They gained seats across each of the Atlantic provinces too, notably taking out Liberal heavy weight Sean Casey in Charlottetown, PEI. This illustrated the big problem facing the Liberals; if voters were happy with the New Democrats, what was the point of voting Liberal? In every corner of the country support for he party of Laurier, Trudeau I, and Chretien had shrunk yet again. With the exception of the 2015 election, that was now five of the last six elections where that had happened. Just as they had in all of those unsuccessful campaigns, the party was driven by the misplaced assumption that those defeats were abnormalities. They'd bounce back eventually. After all, Stephen Harper's election was a fluke. Now so was Mulcair's. Justin Trudeau was young and handsome and didn't have any of that baggage from the Chretien-Martin years. But Liberals now faced the harsh reality that by the next election in 2021, they would be out of power for fifteen-straight years, the longest ever drought for the party in it's history, and the longest gap for a former governing party since the Tories back when Lester B. Pearson and Pierre Trudeau were in power. That was no fluke.

When Trudeau stepped on stage to greet his supporters, the atmosphere felt more like 2011 than 2015. Liberals standing around in the room looked almost as tired as their leader, whose smile seemed forced and empty. His gaze seemed to drift upwards, almost as if he was looking for divine inspiration to help console his party. He didn't find any. Trudeau spoke of the importance of democracy, of Canada's Liberal values, and the great list of accomplishments that were achieved back when they governed the country. But that was all in the past. Looking forward, all they saw were problems and heartache. It became clear the morning after the election that the party would need to select an interim leader, with Trudeau having narrowly lost his Montreal-area riding to popular City Councilor Luc Ferrandez of the NDP. Nobody expected him to stay on as leader, even if he held his seat, so defeat in Papineau made Justin Trudeau's exit easier for everyone involved. Trudeau needed a flawless campaign and some pretty big mistakes on the part of his opponents. He got none of that. Instead he called a press conference, flashed his trademark smile, promised to help the party rebuild in any way he could, and left just as quickly as he showed up. After four years of hope and nice hair, the second coming of Trudeaumania was over. As for who would take over the reigns of their sinking ship, Liberal MPs turned to rookie parliamentarian Jonathan Wilkinson, who was both fluently bilingual, lacked any ambition to lead the party on a permanent basis, and was one of three remaining MPs from British Columbia. It was also a tad bit ironic, since in Wilkinson's youth he had served as the leader of the Saskatchewan NDP's youth wing. As for the party's next great hope, senior Liberals were looking across the Atlantic at the Bank of England. Even better, the great hope was returning their calls this time, worried about the direction Canada was heading under the NDP. Finally some good news.

Aside from Tom Mulcair, the only other party leader who could claim some good news was Jason Kenney. The Tories had entered the campaign flush with cash, but so low in the polls that some in the Ottawa press gallery were talking about the possibility that the party of Harper could end up with as few as eighty seats. Whether fairly or unfairly, Jason Kenney was thought of as an ideologue. A dangerous social conservative who would finally enact Stephen Harper's hidden agenda. Yet, the morning after the election, the Conservative's had won one-hundred-and-nine seats and thirty-one percent of the popular vote, only ten seats fewer than they had won in the last campaign using essentially the same number of votes. Not too shabby all things considered. Yes, they had failed to prevent the New Democrats from winning their coveted majority, but it wasn't the blowout that many had expected. In fact, aside from Ontario and British Columbia, the Tories had actually increased their support, capitalizing on the collapsing Liberal vote as many free-enterprise minded voters returned to the fold. Alberta and the prairies had held. There was an uptick in support up North. In Pierre Trudeau's old riding of Mount Royal, which had elected Liberals since the dawn of time (including in the Mulroney majorities of '84 and '88), residents instead chose Conservative candidate and former journalist Pascale Déry, delivering a pyrrhic victory for Tories in a province that had otherwise gone overwhelmingly for their opponents. Still, there were growing pockets of discontent. Some conservatives firmly in the party's right flank were unhappy with Kenney's performance, clearly feeling buyers remorse that the guy they thought was the fire breathing advocate for the grassroots who'd finally let them loose instead turned out to be just more of the last guy. Maxime Bernier was making rounds, checking to see if anyone was still interested in what he had to say. Luckily for Kenney caucus was happy with his performance and didn't appear eager for another divisive campaign. Over in Alberta, controversial Wildrose MLA Derek Fildebrandt was also reaching out to disaffected conservatives who felt that not only had Kenney abandoned the base, and in doing so he had allowed the socialists to take over the country. Behind the scenes there were murmurs over whether or not Kenney actually wanted to stay on as leader. After all, he had been playing the game for a few decades at this point and had been at least somewhat reluctant to take over as leader in the first place. But Kenney was a loyal soldier to the cause, and told his caucus he was prepared to stay on for one more campaign. Even Stephen Harper needed a second attempt.

Fast forward a few months, and Prime Minister Mulcair was cautiously optimistic. CTV's Lisa LaFlamme sat down with him in December for the Prime Minister's customary year-end interview, where Mulcair spoke about his optimism for the upcoming year, his intent to work with other parties in the areas where they agreed, and get through the reforms the NDP had campaigned on during the election. But what stood out the most was the fact that there was no fire in his voice. No energy or confidence behind his pledges to enact the platform of the successful campaign. For all intents and purposes Mulcair still appeared like he was heading a minority government that could teeter and fall at any moment. This was at odds with statements coming from new MPs like Svend Robinson, the leftwing firebrand who had successfully made his comeback in his old Burnaby riding out in BC. Robinson was pushing for radical changes. Those in the Prime Minister's office weren't. Mulcair was not a revolutionary figure like Senator Bernie Sanders down south of the border, nor was he an ardent socialist like Robinson and a few others within his caucus. He was a pragmatist. He was elected leader of the New Democratic Party because he was the most electable, pragmatic candidate in the race. He had helped the party win its first ever federal election because he was the pragmatic choice in a contest of very flawed candidates. He'd just won a majority government because he eschewed the perception that the NDP would rush to enact transformative and costly policies the moment they won power, and offered Canadians a slow and cautious vision of government wrapped up in the radical option of electing the New Democrats. More than ever, Mulcair reasoned, Canadians wanted stability, and now those who wanted it would have it. Much like Kenney, Mulcair's challenge was how much of the party could he drag with him to the center of Canadian politics and still keep his job. For possibly the next four years, they'd both have the chance to find out.

 

[CanadianTory]

 

[CanadianTory]

If you were to ask some of the more dyed-in-the-wool partisans of the government, they'd say that the biggest immediate issue facing the New Democrats wasn't the long list of promises from the last campaign, nor was it going to be all the inevitable fights they were going to have to pick with the Premiers. They'd have four years to deal with all that, and 2021 was a long ways off. No, the biggest issue was their headspace. Too many New Democrats were having trouble accepting that they'd won a majority government, albeit a small one, and both the Prime Minister and his inner circle weren't exactly sure what to do next. Tom Mulcair had accomplished the impossible, twice, in electing the country's first ever New Democrat government and then elevating it to a majority. Unheard of. Unimaginable. But if you bothered to listen to the Prime Minister's end of the year interview with Lisa LaFlamme and CTV, you could have been forgiven for thinking the man had only narrowly hung on to power. Here he was, talking about compromising with the opposition, about sitting down and having a meaningful debate with people like Brad Wall and Brian Pallister, the two Premiers whose job seemed to be criticizing almost every word that came out of Mulcair's mouth. For the more "passionate" members of the government, it didn't make any sense. Why seek compromise with climate-deniers, homophobes, and corporate shills? Canadians had given the NDP a mandate, hadn't they? If 39% was good enough for the Tories and the Liberals to enact their agendas, it sure as hell as good enough for those like Svend Robinson and his friends. The government had a historic opportunity to fight income inequality, climate change, political and economic corruption, and here was their leader sounding cautious. careful. centrist. Liberal.

Yet it was exactly that cautious approach that the New Democrats had used to win their new mandate, and Tom Mulcair wasn't interested in scaring off potential voters to appease caucus members who were in too much of a hurry. The Tories were still playing Stephen Harper's best hits and the Liberals were going to spend the next two years trying to define their leadership choices. A majority government was an opportunity for Mulcair and his party time to establish themselves as the best choice for centrist voters ahead of the next election. In order to do that, the New Democrats had to stay disciplined, focused, and constantly on-message. That meant that Tom Mulcair was still going to be in charge of the Tom Mulcair government, and that meant the tight-control over caucus that had defined his time as a minority prime minister would continue on now that he was a majority prime minister. Ministers would receive their briefings from the PMO, the line that the Prime Minister and his inner circle wanted to push to Canadians, and more deliverology; the idea of flooding everyone with so much data about the government's progress on this policy or that policy that any complaints would get buried.

Heading Mulcair's inner circle was yet another former Liberal from Quebec, Alain Gaul. Having previously served as the Prime Minister's Chief of Staff back when he was Quebec's environment minister, Gaul knew Mulcair probably as well as anyone in politics could. More importantly, he was trusted, and had proved capable after helping the party transition from opposition to government after the 2015 campaign. Like his boss, Gaul wanted to get stuff done in Ottawa and didn't have much time for the kind of absolutism that defined a lot of social democrats outlooks. Pre-Orange Wave New Democrats didn't like him, not least because of his previous career as a corporate restructuring lawyer. To help ease some of those tensions was Deputy Chief of Staff Anne McGrath, Jack Layton's former top advisor and the party's former president. McGrath had been involved with the party since the 1990s, and both MPs and party operatives trusted her as if she were Layton himself. If someone felt like Mulcair was straying too far from NDP orthodoxy or was betraying Layton's memory, they'd likely get a visit from McGrath. She'd set them right. Rounding out the PMO side of things was Brad Levigne, the Prime Minister's Principal Secretary and top advisor. Another former party operator from Layton's tenure as leader, Levigne had been the architect of Mulcair's makeover for the 2015 campaign, helping the then-leader of the opposition settle on a clearer, simpler message for voters; Ready for Change. It was his job to make sure that same message was carried forth by caucus, and not get bogged down by the kind of muddled intellectualism that defined much of the party's past.

But the Prime Minister had won his job by earning the loyalty of his colleagues (Or at least a big enough chunk of them). He had abandoned the Quebec Liberals and joined up with Jack Layton when the idea of any NDP representation was ludicrous. It was a gamble that paid off. He had worked hard and had won the leadership over a more familiar, more establishment-friendly candidate. Again, another gamble. Mulcair had taken a party that had only begun to embrace its confidence and reach for power and had dragged it over the finish line, in some instances kicking and screaming. For all the accusations that he was a loner, that he relied too heavily on the unelected insiders that made up the PMO, Tom Mulcair still got along with much of his caucus and his cabinet.

In terms of seniority, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Megan Leslie typically topped the list. Obviously it helped having a woman as Mulcair's number two. It softened his image and made him seem more appealing to the electorate. But Leslie also brought with her a decade of parliamentary experience and a quick wit typical of most Nova Scotian politicos. Her inclination to build-bridges and foster dialogue between factions within the party also helped balance Mulcair's top-down style of leadership. To many within the NDP, she was the future of the party and an obvious potential successor to the Prime Minister. Unfortunately for Leslie supporters, the candidate most likely to get Mulcair's blessings in a hypothetical future leadership contest also happened to have a seat in his inner circle of cabinet ministers. Despite having backed Brian Topp in the race to succeed Jack Layton, Alexandre Boulerice worked his way into the Prime Minister's confidence. The svelte and bearded MP for Montreal’s Rosemont–La Petite-Patrie riding had been a longtime member of the NDP, well before it was fashionable in Quebec. A longtime union activist, his backing of his leader gave Mulcair the kind of left-wing credentials needed to keep the NDP together as it transitioned from principled, forever opposition to pragmatic government. Mulcair and his team didn't forget it, and rewarded Boulerice's loyalty by making him the minister in charge of Canada's workforce and Labour, perhaps the most important portfolio to any die-hard Dipper. Plus, he was a Quebecer, and someone who the Prime Minister wanted to take under his wing and mentor. Leslie, Boulerice, Howard Hampton and Nathan Cullen were all big names in cabinet, and were capable performers, but only one member of the government enjoyed the rare ability to speak to journalists and appear on television without having to clear it with the PMO first. As the government's House Leader, Peter Julian's job was to manage the NDP's legislative agenda, a position he had held since 2013 when the party was still in opposition. Solid, boring, experienced, the B.C. MP was yet another trusted figure within the party, firmly placed on the party's left but void of the type of rhetoric that defined approaches like Ashton's or Robinson's. He and Mulcair got along well, sharing a desire to fulfill Jack Layton's dream of supplementing the Liberals, permanently. If that meant some compromising here and there, Peter Julian was fine with it.

For the rest of his cabinet, the Prime Minister opted for pretty much the same ministry that he entered the campaign with, with the odd change here and there. A few newcomers, like Toronto's Jennifer Keesmaat and New Brunswick's Jennifer McKenzie, managed to find seats at the cabinet table, whereas a few other ministries got some new names. The big offices of National Defence, Foreign Affairs, Health, Justice, and Finance remained the same, with Jack Harris, Megan Leslie, Nycole Turmel, Craig Scott, and Nathan Cullen all keeping their jobs, respectively. The press called it a rather unremarkable shuffle, and that the Prime Minister was likely hedging his bets in the hopes of avoiding alienating anyone in his minor majority government. They were right. Not counting Speaker of the House Don Davies, the government could only ever afford to lose five votes lest they lose their unchallenged command of the House of Commons. Mulcair was going to have to pick his fights very carefully going forward, and avoid alienating too many of those social democrats that he didn't much care for. Impossible? The Prime Minister had overcome the impossible twice before. But that had often been thanks to luck, and in politics everybody's luck ran out eventually.

 

[CanadianTory]

Ask any Conservative partisan and they'd say the reason they lost the 2015 was because of Stephen Harper's tone. After nine years Harper was just too angry, too reclusive, and too much like the caricature that people accused him of being to reward him with another mandate, even a minority one. Ask any of the Tory insiders currently in the employ of Jason Kenney why they lost the 2017 campaign and they'd blame it on timing. Timing is important in politics. According to the Tories the 2017 election was just too soon after the last campaign that the New Democrats still had that "new government" smell about them. Besides Joe Clark, Canadians don't really throw governments out after a single term. They like to give them the opportunity to screw things up first.

Gathered in Stornoway, the official line coming from the leader's office was that everything was fine. The truth was a bit more complex. Kenney and his teamed banked that the New Democrat's, without a figure like Stephen Harper, would see their coalition of voters split apart between themselves and the Liberals, allowing the Tories the opportunity to run up the middle. Yet Kenney's selling proposition as Conservative Party leader was that he was essentially Stephen Harper, albeit a Stephen Harper who could speak more languages and felt more at home amongst immigrant communities. Better humoured too. More willing to chat with reporters. According to those within the Opposition Leader's office, Kenney took pride in watching reporters run out of questions to ask, or eventually stop writing down what the Albertan Tory was saying because they had run out of space. In some ways it was Kenney's attempt to co-opt the government's "deliverology" strategy. Flood journalists with enough information and all they're write is how impressive and smart you are. Or at least that was how the theory went in Tory High Command. It didn't always turn out that way. As for the campaign, the Tories had spent most of the previous two years trying to shed their image as corrupt and out-of-touch by sticking Kenney in a blue pickup truck and parading him around the barbeque circuit. The plan for the 2017 election was to keep doing that. No suits, only a dress shirt and blue jeans. Tories' struggled with what their post-Harper identity was, so most just decided that for the time being to replace "Harper" with "Kenney". But no matter how many times Kenney assailed Tom Mulcair and the NDP for their "assault on free enterprise", or spent time with immigrant community leaders, the party just couldn't escape the social conservatism. For some conservatives, that was perfectly fine with them.

A growing faction of the Conservative Party of Canada was sympathetic to the idea that Harper's nine-years in Ottawa was a disappointment for the conservative movement, since a significant portion of Harper's time was spent reigning in the more vocal, more socially conservative, more libertarian members of the party. After all, Stephen Harper had witnessed the intra-conservative battles of the late 19080s and 1990s. Canada was never going to elect a purely socially conservative government. So they had to focus on incrementalism. Build a broader coalition of voters. For a good number of Tory activists, they wanted to be let off the leash. They wanted conservatives to be like their conservatives, and damn the consequences. Not unlike some within the current federal government, there were some within the party whom the Kenney leadership team dubbed as "eternal oppositionists", those who would rather be right than be right and win. Kenney, like Stephen Harper, had learned that lesson and reveled in it's success during those nine-years in power (The second longest stint for Conservatives in the country's history). Kenney's expectation was that like the old boss he'd be able to woo the factions together in harmony under the promise of power. That was proving to be difficult.

Kenney's post-election Shadow Cabinet was yet another attempt to reset those relations. The biggest question was who was going to take on Finance Minister Nathan Cullen during Question Period. For the previous two years that role had belonged to Quebec MP and former Action democratique du Quebec leader Gerard Deltell. A passionate and fiery former journalist, Deltell knew the art of the performance and also served as the party's Quebec Lieutenant. But Deltell also hailed from the Mulroney, moderate PC wing of the party, and to many in the party's activist wing represented everything wrong with the party's direction in the last campaign. So, out with Deltell, and in with Kevin Falcon, the party's star candidate in South Surrey—White Rock, British Columbia. Premier Gordon Campbell's former Health Minister, Falcon had run as the conservative successor to Campbell when the latter decided to retire in 2011. He lost to the more moderate Christy Clark, and instead ended up as Deputy Premier and Finance Minister before bowing out of politics altogether in 2012. Western, conservative, experienced and acceptable to both major wings of the party, Falcon was the ideal choice. Deltell would remain the party's Quebec Lieutenant, a reward for the party's showing in his native province in the last campaign, and move to Justice. Most other big names would stay put, including former interim leader Erin O'Toole at Foreign Affairs, Manitoba's James Bezan for National Defence, and 2016 Conservative leadership runner-up Max Bernier as Transportation critic, while fellow 2016 candidate Lisa Raitt stayed on as Deputy Leader.

With the loss of a number of Ontario MPs, including Opposition House leader Paul Calandra, Saskatchewan MP and former Speaker of the House of Commons Andrew Scheer would move back into the role, hopefully utilizing his knowledge of the House and its procedure to keep the government and its narrow majority on it's toes. Cheryl Gallant would shadow the Families and Social Development portfolio in another big win for the social conservatives of the party. Yet placing Gallant in that job posed the risk of losing a lot of that goodwill that Kenney would need for the wider electorate. Journalists were already asking questions about abortion again, which Kenney and his team had to have expected with her appointment. That social conservative albatross was still hanging there, stinking up the room.

Still, the truth was things could've been a lot worse for the Conservatives, and even most of those dyed-in-the-wool activists could admit that Kenney had run a mostly solid campaign (Emphasis on mostly), saving potentially dozens of seats out West and expanding the party out in the East. Remember those seat projections saying the Tories would drop to 90, or even 80 seats? A loss of only ten seats was a resounding victory as far as Kenney and his allies were concerned. Because of that loss, Kenney would still be required to face an automatic leadership review in six month's time, and it was also true that there were indeed forces brewing to try and force Kenney out.

Derek Fildebrandt was the unofficial leader of those disgruntled partisans. A backer of Bernier in the last leadership campaign, Fildebrandt styled himself as the tough-talking, true blue conservative that was right at home amongst the likes of Ezra Levant, Conrad Black and Rebel News. Fildebrandt was the kind of populist who reflected a growing number of louder, angrier conservatives trying to flood the scene. According to him, the Tories lost because they were trying to act too much like the government and not enough like real conservatives. Rumour was that Fildebrandt was putting out feelers to Max Bernier about starting a new right-wing populist political party. Rumour also had it that those discussions were going nowhere, citing Bernier's skepticism that there were enough voters to make such a venture worth the risk. Ted Cruz had lost to Hillary Clinton. Bernier had lost to Jason Kenney by a fairly convincing (A.K.A. large) margin. Apparently Bernier was fine cooling his heals until something better came along. But with the support of countless faceless voices on Twitter and outraged voices from Rebel News, it seemed like Fildebrandt might launch such a party on his own if no bigger names stepped forward. Despite his exhaustion, the threat of a right-wing challenge seemed to only energize Kenney, who told those close to him the last person who was going to force him out of his job was Derek Fildebrandt. Kenney considered him little better than an annoyance, and had advised Wildrose leader Brian Jean not to readmit him into the provincial caucus's fold lest they jeopardize either merger talks with the Albertan PCs or Wildrose's chances against the Notley and the NDP at the next election, scheduled for 2019. As far as the Tory leader was concerned, this was just Fildebrandt seeking to even the score against his political betters.

But the irony of the situation wasn't lost on Kenney either. He himself had been apart of an insurgent political movement from Alberta, and understood how dangerous it could be for conservative unity in the long-term. Derek Fildebrandt had his admirers, but he was no Preston Manning. Then again, Manning was no real threat until it was too late to stop him.

 

[CanadianTory]

 

[CTTeller]

Renegade Down - David Cameron

​

How prescient this was, looking back.

 

[CanadianTory]

How prescient this was, looking back.

I knew he had some final performance left.

 

[CanadianTory]

Every Prime Minister is partly defined by his or her relationship with whoever sits in the Oval Office. That's just the nature of being neighbors with a world superpower. We feel every twitch and every grumble from across the border because the stakes are just always that high. Jean Chrétien was very interested in building a good working relationship with then-newly elected President George W. Bush. Cabinet Ministers reached out to their American counterparts, and Bush and his team seemed interested in the Alberta oil-sands. Despite their obvious political differences, the Bush-Chrétien relationship had the potential to be profitable to both sides. Then 9/11 happened. Chrétien decided to sit out the Iraq War. That was the end of that relationship. When Barack Obama got elected in 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper knew that there were going to be ideological differences. Obama was the charismatic new President who heralded hope and change in a country desperate for both. Harper wore sweater vests and listened to The Beatles. Both sides tried to manage expectations and adopt to the changing tides of the Global Recession, and admittedly worked well together in that regard. But toss in Harper's disinterest in environmental issues and Obama's disinterest in approving the Keystone XL Pipeline and those frosty relations never really warmed. Tom Mulcair hoped to prove to voters that he could get along with the Americans and show that the New Democrats could be trusted with Canada's reputation on the world stage.

Whereas Barack Obama and his team's preference for Justin Trudeau was hard to ignore (and according to Canadian officials made for an awkward first meeting between the two men), Mulcair found a friendlier ally in Hillary Clinton. Many within Clinton's personal circle still feigned annoyance towards Trudeau and the Liberals, stemming from the latter had tried to use Clinton to fundraise off of on multiple occasions. First time had been in 2014 when they had used a supposedly apolitical event hosted by the Canada 2020 think-tank as a fundraiser for the upcoming election campaign. Then in 2016 Liberal Party high command had reached out to (or begged, depending on who you talked to) the Clinton campaign in the hopes that their candidate would record a message of support for Trudeau for their party convention. Huma Abedin, President Clinton's longtime confidant, expressed her distain at the Liberal's blatant attempt to ride her boss's coattails. The reveal of Trudeau's use of blackface didn't help matters either. If there was one thing Hillary Clinton didn't respect it was sloppiness. She had, after all, built an entire career around carefully scripting every move, every vote, and every sentence that would come out of her mouth. Trudeau reminded her too much of Obama; all charisma and no real substance. But at least Trudeau was a known quantity in Hillaryland. Meanwhile the election of Tom Mulcair and the New Democrats was greeted with mystery and caution. Some uninformed observers suggested that Mulcair was more in line with views being pushed by Clinton primary challenger Bernie Sanders. Others warned that the election of an openly socialist government on the northern border would only embolden Republicans, who would be more than happy to hang such a label around Clinton's neck. Fast forward to Clinton and Mulcair's first face-to-face meeting in February 2017, and both leader's discovered a number of similarities. Both agreed that the Keystone XL Pipeline was dead. Both were leading parties that increasingly relied on a younger, more left-leaning base. Both were viewed with distrust and suspicion by members of that base. Both were disinterested in anything having to do with socialism. Canadian journalists couldn't help but notice the relaxed nature between the two leaders, quickly dubbing it as a new thawing between Canada and the United States, and possibly the start of the strongest special relationship since Bill Clinton and Jean Chrétien.

Unfortunately is wasn't long before that relationship began to take a back seat in the face of the President's mounting domestic problems.

G7's are routinely criticized as oppressive and costly photo-ops, where politicians from around the world descend on a city, talk about a bunch of issues and do nothing about anything of it. Rinse and repeat. Not to mention all the protestors and security headaches that accompany those politicians. While true, the G7 meetings really do help the world’s major industrialized economies align their work. The 44th G7 gathering in Mulcair's native Montreal was the NDP leader's first opportunity to play host to his other colleagues. Embrace the role of statesman setting the agenda for the rest of the world to follow. Fresh off his majority victory, it was seen by many within the New Democratic caucus as a chance for their Prime Minister to flex his muscles and actually push for progress on climate change, gender equality, Syrian refugee relocation and job growth across all sectors and incomes. But without the United States onside, not much of anything of substance would get done, and President Clinton didn't seem interested nor capable of committing her country to being onside of much of anything. Arriving in Montreal, President Clinton was tired. Her history-breaking Presidency, which seemed to have so much promise when it began, had quickly fizzled out and gotten dragged down into the mud and grime of obstructionism and polarization. No matter what she did or how many concessions she offered congressional Republicans, Mitch McConnell wanted nothing to do with her. Clinton had spent so much of her time and political capital to get someone, anyone successfully nominated for the Supreme Court that by the time the President attended the G7, there were already articles being written about the oncoming bloodbath that awaited the Democrats in the upcoming U.S. midterms, or how Clinton might not even get renominated by her party come 2020. The President was also getting hounded daily by MeToo Activists who to the Clinton's seemed intent on digging up old stories that were better left in the past. Even embattled UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson was reported to have told French President Emmanuel Macron just how tired Hillary Clinton looked, sparking accusations of sexism from some corners of the press and social media. Sexist? Very likely. True? Also very likely.

Like Mulcair, Boris Johnson was trying to use the G7 meeting to demonstrate his statesmanship quality and shore up support for himself back home. Johnson, the architect of the successful and divisive Brexit vote, had been elected leader in 2016 because he pledged to deliver a clear break from the European Union. Two years and one election later, Johnson had only secured a narrow majority over the opposition Labour Party and had gotten no closer to delivering on a Brexit deal that pleased all parties involved, including the various factions within his own Conservative Party. Rumours swirled that amidst poor polling numbers and growing frustration with Johnson's management style, members of the government were assembling signatures to dump him as leader. A successful and calm G7 could persuade wobbling supporters that Johnson was steady and reliable on the world stage, maybe buying him enough time to get a deal through parliament. Best that Boris would get was a stumble off the photo-op platform with his fellow G7 leaders that quickly got memed by the internet.

Aside from Clinton-fatigue and BoJo-memes, the other most notable story emerging from the gathering of leaders was the one that everyone had already been writing from the very beginning; that the 44th gathering would be German Chancellor Angela Merkel's final such meeting since coming to power in 2005. Twelve years later and Merkel was leaving behind a successful electoral legacy marred by recent controversies over the amount of Syrian refugees she and her government had allowed into Germany. The incumbent Christian Democratic Union, led by former Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen, was now neck and neck with the opposition Social Democrats and the technocratic Martin Schulz. With the election scheduled for September, it was a real possibility that Merkel's chosen successor and heir to her legacy would get rejected by German voters. In the meantime Merkel would relish in her swansong and bid her colleagues a fond farewell, and every G7 leader made sure to pay her tribute in return, Mulcair included.

​

Before Clinton even got back on her plane for Washington, D.C. journalists and columnists from the Ottawa press pool were already submitting write-ups labeling the summit as yet another superficial do-nothing. Tom Mulcair's attempt to appear as the leader of the agenda had fallen flat, with Canadian officials reported to had been routinely sidelined in talks between the United States and the other players at the summit. A meeting between Mulcair and the newly elected French President Emmanuel Macron had been canceled last-minute, only to have Macron spotted speaking with Clinton hours later. There had been a joint communiqué promising to commit to further discussions on increased global trade and gender equality, but it was all the usual lip service that observers and protestors expected. Much to the chagrin on many New Democrats, the communiqué said nothing about climate change. Although Mulcair had pushed for something to be included, Clinton had convinced the ensemble of world leaders to wait until the next G7 meeting in France next year (coincidentally after the U.S. Midterms). Mulcair let it be known that he wasn't pleased by the turn of events, nor how he and his team had been treated by their American and French counterparts. A call between U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Foreign Affairs Minister Megan Leslie, which was meant to smooth things over, apparently didn't go much better either. Whether he liked it or not, Tom Mulcair had been reminded that he was at the mercy of the Americans, and didn't have any real cards to play of his own. When President Clinton was asked by reporters about she thought about having undermined her Canadian hosts, she replied that Mulcair had been a gracious and effective host and that she had enjoyed herself at the Fairmont The Queen Elizabeth Hotel. The G7 had actually taken place at the Ritz-Carlton.

 

[CanadianTory]

 

[CanadianTory]

A mainstay of politics in Canada is often described as taking one for the team. You'll never agree on everything, the saying goes, but you suck it up because its in the team's best interest. The Liberal Party is famous for it. Yes, there were spats between leader's and members of the government, and everyone knew about them, but they all happened in private. Liberals clammed up in public when the reporters were around, smiled, and parroted the message of the day. For instance, when someone asked whether Justin Trudeau should stay or go as leader of the party, the caucus was resolutely behind the guy. Patience won out and eventually that problem sorted itself out. Now the Liberals were free to gush about how things were going to be so much better under Mark Carney's enlightened leadership (i.e. sunny ways minus the blackface) without the risk of appearing disloyal to the team. It's a lesson that wasn't lost on the New Democrats. The government was divided on a whole range of issues, including the Middle East, free trade, energy and Canada's natural resources, NATO, you name it. But they fight together as New Democrats. They (mostly) keep their team united because the alternative means they don't get to do the things they've waited over five decades to do. Canadians don't have a lot of confidence in a political party's ability to manage the government if they can't manage themselves. Just ask the litany of opposition leaders who now find themselves out of politics.

Conservatives have a mixed record when it comes to playing as a team. The Conservative Party of Canada, as a creation of Stephen Harper, made loyalty to the party and its leader a cardinal virtue. Hell, even Harper's then-chief of staff, Nigel Wright, wrote a personal cheque to make the Mike Duffy scandal go away for his boss. It was simply a case of doing what you had to do to help the team win. Although criticized by journalists and the other parties as evidence that Stephen Harper was some kind of control freak, to those with any understanding of history admitted it made perfect sense. Canada's right had been fractured and divided for a decade before Stephen Harper and Peter Mackay put the pieces back together again. Before that, Ottawa journalists routinely wrote about how much the Progressive Conservatives and their more right-leaning, rural cousins in the Canadian Alliance hated one another more than the Liberals. Before the movement split the papers wrote about Joe Clark and Brian Mulroney's rivalry. Before that, Diefenbaker and the divisions that were wrought after bringing his leadership to a bitter end. Whenever Tories fight themselves, the Liberals win. Harper hoped to put an end to that and for nine years, two-hundred-and-seventy-one days, he did. But there had long been whispers of what would happen to the party post-Harper. Would the various factions continue to play nice with one another, or would ideology and self-interest win out as the party devolved to its baser, unelectable pieces?

Derek Fildebrandt is no stranger to self-interest. The former Wildrose MLA has long been a fixture of controversy in Alberta. He was briefly suspended from Wildrose in 2016 after he hurled blatantly homophobic attacks against Kathleen Wynne, Ontario's first openly gay Premier. According to him it was just a matter of poor phrasing. But only a few years later Fildebrandt would permanently get the boot from Wildrose leader Brian Jean. Maybe it was the fact he was renting out his taxpayer-funded Edmonton apartment on AirBnB. Or that he was found guilty of a hit-and-run accident. Or maybe it was his hunting violation. Or maybe Jean just saw the writing on the wall; keeping a loose cannon like Fildebrandt around was only ever going to cause his party headaches as it prepared to do battle against Rachel Notley and the Alberta NDP and a reinvigorated PC Party under former provincial cabinet minister Manmeet Bhullar. Since his ejection from Wildrose, Fildebrandt had made little secret his contempt for Jason Kenney, whom he blamed for orchestrated his predicament. As the story goes, according to Fildebrandt, Kenney and his team, in the hopes of influencing a merger between the right in Alberta, provided Jean with the resources and cover needed to dump the controversial MLA without suffering much heat from the political right. The fact that no one came to his defense is proof, according to Fildebrandt, that Albertan conservatives, both provincially and federally, have been bought off by Jason Kenney. Certainly is has nothing to do with the fact that polls show a majority of Albertans in favour, including a narrow majority of Wildrose supporters, of Fildebrandt's removal from the party.

Yet living in the political wilderness didn't deter the Wildrose-now-Independent MLA's determination for revenge against his political enemies. For months after his ejection from Wildrose, rumours swirled that Fildebrandt was looking to recruit former Conservative cabinet minister and leadership-runner-up Maxime Bernier to publicly challenge Jason Kenney for the leadership of the federal party, or failing that, abandon the Tories altogether and establish a new right-wing political party to represent what he called "pissed off conservatives" tired of trying to be anything other than the most extreme version of the Canadian Alliance/Reform Party. In Derek Fildebrandt's dream scenario, Bernier would publicly call out Kenney for being weak, start up the new party, win countless seats out in Alberta and the rest of western Canada, and force the federal Conservatives to either bend the knee to their demands, or get bent themselves. Of course, the fiery Albertan would be at Bernier's side the entire time, maybe even with a seat in Ottawa. That ended up not happening. Bernier, for all of his tough-talk against supply-management or his distaste for the equalization formula used by the federal government, was at least smart enough to realize that hitching his wagon to someone like Derek Fildebrandt wouldn't likely win him any success in the long-term. Besides, brash, right-wing leaning populism had been defeated at the ballot box almost everywhere. Donald Trump and Ted Cruz's presidential campaigns. Le Pen in France. Doug Ford in Toronto. Bernier's own leadership campaign in 2016. In every instance, the seemingly more moderate, establishment-friendly candidate had won out against the candidate seeking to upend the apple cart. Besides, there was a lot of chit chat that Bernier's next move was to take over the Conservative Party of Quebec and build his own credible, libertarian-leaning alternative to Francois Legault and the CAQ. A nice way to end one's political career. Either that or make enough of a splash that he could write a book and maybe get his own show on The Rebel or (even better!) Fox News.

No Bernier? No problem! If the MP from Beauce wouldn't rid the conservative movement of those pesky Toronto-area consultants who supported abortion, same-sex marriage, and aboriginal reconciliation, than Derek Fildebrandt would do it himself. Luckily for him (and unluckily for Jason Kenney), he was at least able to steal some headlines and cause the Conservative leader some embarrassment when he announced that Manitoba MP and former cabinet minister Steven Fletcher would join his party as its parliamentary spokesperson. The notoriously free-spirited Fletcher had often found himself on the outside of Harper and Kenney's inner circles, and had failed on more than one occasion to break into the upper ranks of Jason Kenney's shadow cabinet. The best he managed was as Ed Fast's deputy shadowing Peggy Nash and the Treasury Board portfolio. He was never going to get finance or health, his views were just too outside the mainstream. Fletcher had been blunt with both friends and colleagues; if he wasn't going to be a player in the Conservative Party of Canada, he'd start looking elsewhere. Derek Fildebrandt's new Western Freedom Party seemed as good a fit as any, and would finally allow the Manitoban MP the opportunity to speak his mind on issues he cared about, not to mention give disgruntled Tories an opportunity to voice their frustrations.

​

For Kenney and the Conservatives it was an unwelcomed distraction. For months Kenney had been hammering away at the government and the Prime Minister for his lackluster performance at the G7. Making matters worse for the NDP, their narrow majority had only gotten narrower following the ejection of Quebec MP Hans Marotte for comparing Quebecer's struggles to those of Palestinians in Israel, complete with the expression of hope that sovereigntists had found the right political vehicle in the NDP. Fast forward a few weeks later and Marotte was the Bloc Quebecois' only representative in parliament, their first since before the last election. Instead of slamming the government for being soft on separatism or weakening Canada's stature on the world stage, Kenney was now answering whether his position as leader was secure. What was he going to do? Was the party still united behind him? Were any other caucus members going to defect? Had he spoken to Derek Fildebrandt? And on and on it went. Jason Kenney knew how potent protest parties could be. Political protest movements have been influential in Canadian politics before. In Kenney's lifetime those have included the Parti Quebecois, the Reform Party and the Canadian Alliance, the Bloc Quebecois. Having failed to stop this insurgency from being born, Kenney's only hope now was to stop it in its infancy before it amassed enough resources and resigned the Tories to another decade in the political wilderness. Still, when asked by reporters, a great many Tories within caucus were optimistic. Derek Fildebrandt wasn't exactly a political genius.

 

[CanadianTory]

 

[CanadianTory]

The past is never dead. It's not even past. The guy who wrote that, William Faulkner, would probably find that sentiment applicable to the federal New Democrats and their ongoing identity crisis. For a lot of New Democrats, or left-wingers who had bought up NDP memberships, the big question everything kept coming back to was what the party actually stood for. What was the purpose of the New Democratic Party of Canada? Was it to win elections, or just say wonderful things to one another while languishing in opposition, principles and ideology intact? It had lived without power for it's entire existence up to 2015. Now the debate was could it live without principles.

To those who held an NDP membership card and had actually led their party to a successful election result - BC Premier John Horgan, Alberta Premier Rachel Notley, and Prime Minister Tom Mulcair - the answer was obvious. There was only so much good that you could achieve from the sidelines of Canadian politics compared to what you could sitting around a cabinet table. Notley in particular, who would likely soon find herself out of a job according to polls back home, was adamant that the NDP had to stand up for the rights of all workers, including those who worked in Canada's energy sector. If Canada's economy was to continue to function, it needed to keep building natural-resource infrastructure. That meant pipelines had to be built, current ones had to be maintained, and environmentalists had to get with the program. It was an issue that divided the party like no other, including between elected officials. John Horgan, for example, was firmly of the position (Like Mulcair) that it was in his province's best interests to prevent further oil tanker traffic in and around Vancouver and the Salish Sea. Whereas Notley saw the issue as one of jobs, Horgan and most other party members saw it as one of environmental catastrophe. As one would imagine, the tensions went beyond just the NDP tent and extended to the entire federation.

But Mulcair was still the boss. For a lot of those left-wing activists, many of whom weren't particularly affiliated with the NDP, this ran contrary to their vision of the country. Didn't matter that Mulcair had refused to ratify the Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal, canceled the Keystone XL Pipeline when the more politically logical decision would've been to approve it, or the fact he had repeatedly thrown cold water on the Trans Mountain pipeline. What mattered to the activists was that the NDP leader still wasn't going far enough. The Alberta Tar Sands were still functioning, for instance, despite the fact they employed thousands of Canadians. Mulcair and his team had also repeatedly distanced themselves from Avi Lewis and the Leap Manifesto crowd - those who advocated for a complete and immediate end to any new natural-resource development. Leave the oil in the ground and quadrupole efforts to reach net-zero emissions targets by 2050. Aside from a few canceled pipeline projects, Mulcair and the NDP were still publicly in favour of a pipeline that ran from west to east to refine oil in Canada (So long as it was independently approved by the National Energy Board). Even worse, the Prime Minister was still calling for Canada to be an energy superpower of the 21st century. That didn't fit in with activist's tiny perfect vision of Canada's future.

Then there was the government's position on carbon pricing. Mulcair and the NDP had been elected, twice, based upon the pledge that they would introduce a cap and trade carbon pricing scheme on big polluters. According to the government their plan would reduce Canada's emissions by eighty percent by 2050, compared to levels from 1990. Nobody actually believed that would happen, especially since the government had also pledged against imposing a national plan on provinces so long as their own made-in-province carbon pricing plans were equal to or greater than the government's targets. But that promise was made in 2015, when the New Democrats were elected to a minority. No minority government, even a historical one, would find itself with the political muscle to convince other provinces to sign on. But now that the government had a majority, it could. But, according to Mulcair's office, the government wouldn't. Rachel Notley had implemented a plan in Alberta, but it was an election year and Mulcair wasn't interested in damaging her already difficult odds at re-election. Quebec had just elected Francois Legault and the CAQ, who had warned the NDP that it would not accept any mingling in provincial jurisdiction by the federal government. Over in Ontario Vic Fedeli and the Progressive Conservatives had included carbon pricing in their 2018 platform. But that was before they had to go and dump their former leader mid-campaign when accusations of sexual misconduct came to light. Now that Patrick Brown was gone they claimed they were no longer bound to a promise they had explicitly campaigned on. Only British Columbia and New Brunswick had signed on. Everyone else had decided to come up with their own plans, or were dragging their feet.

Saint-Jean MP Hans Marotte had been kicked out of caucus for repeated pro-separatist comments. He now sat with the Bloc Quebecois. Former International Trade Minister Paul Dewar had passed away in February. The government's minor majority had shrunk even smaller in a manner of a few months. There didn't seem to be a lot of appetite in the PMO to begin waging a war against the provinces. That only enraged the activists further.

In stepped Svend Robinson. Tall, handsome, well-spoken, Robinson had more grey in his hair than he did in 2004, when he last served as the Member of Parliament for Burnaby North—Seymour. From 1979 until 2004, Robinson was the left-wing firebrand of the NDP with a long history of controversy. Be it his heckling of then-President Ronald Reagan during his speech to the House of Commons, or his proposal to have September 11 named Chile Day (to mark the overthrow of Salvador Allende's democratically elected government by the American government), Robinson was no stranger to standing on principle. Even in his unsuccessful bid to lead the NDP in 1995, Robinson ran in seeming defiance of any notion of power. Having resigned from parliament in 2004 following the theft of an expensive ring, he would stage his political comeback in 2017 in the shadow of Bernie Sander's unsuccessful challenge to Hillary Clinton in the previous year's Democratic presidential primaries. Although defeated, Sanders had galvanized large segments of voters to passionately support his candidacy and it's socialist policies. The BC MP wanted to replicate that movement's momentum in Canada. Unfortunately for Tom Mulcair and his allies, for the elder statesman of the NDP's left-flank that meant pushing the party in a very un-Mulcair direction on a whole range of issues. Hence Robinson's decision to form the NDP Community Movement, the spiritual successor to his previous faction that was formed at the start of the new century, New Politics Initiative. Like the NPI, the NDPCM (What a mouthful) aimed to simply be a vehicle to preserve the party's leftwing principles in the face of more moderate (AKA electable) leadership. Whether you were against globalization, free trade, pipelines, or championed the principles of feminism, environmentalism, or just didn't like Tom Mulcair all that much, the NDPCM was to be your new home. If you asked Svend Robinson what the aim of the faction was, he'd say it was to prevent the New Democrats from turning into the Liberals. A lot of observers, including journalists, interpreted that to mean preventing Tom Mulcair from leading the party into the next election.

Spoiler: Members of the NDP Community Group

Svend Robinson (Burnaby North—Seymour)
Dennis Bevington (Northwest Territories)
Sean Devine (Nepean)
Dirka Prout (London North Centre)
Paulina Ayala (Honoré-Mercier)
Mathieu Ravignat (Pontiac)
Erin Weir (Regina—Lewvan)
Bill Sundhu (Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo)

If you were to interpret that as the group's primary and only goal, which members would tell you it wasn't, obviously you would need a pretty serious candidate with whom to replace Tom Mulcair with. A Paul Martin to Mulcair's Chretien. You would need someone who had name recognition with Canadians and connections to the party grassroots and labour movement. Someone who could conceivably maintain the NDP's support in Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia while growing its support out in Atlantic Canada and the rest of the west. Someone who was fluently bilingual. Someone who could push the party in a more left-wing direction but not alienate the voters who had voted NDP in 2017. Lucky for the party and for the Prime Minister, nobody checked all those boxes except Mulcair himself. For many NDP MPs, especially those coming from those three key provinces, they were elected under Tom Mulcair's NDP, not Svend Robinson's. Back in the 1990s the big question facing the NDP was whether they should simply roll up their tent and pack it in entirely. Fast forward to 2019 and now they found themselves in government, holding the levers of power.

Power or principles? So long as the party kept winning elections, the principles would probably keep taking a back seat. But if Canadians fell out of love with Tom Mulcair, or the it looked like the party was heading for defeat, the NDP would have to make a serious choice. Would they reopen the rifts that Mulcair had closed, and embrace the principles that they told themselves were beautiful and right, or would they buckle down and keep playing for power? Whatever the party decided, they'd have to learn to stick with it.

 

[CanadianTory]

 

[CanadianTory]

Prime Ministers of Canada
Pierre Trudeau (Liberal) 1968 - 1978
-74: Robert Stanfield (Prog. Conservative), David Lewis (New Democratic), Réal Caouette (Social Credit)
Brian Mulroney (Progressive Conservative) 1978 - 1982
-78: Pierre Trudeau (Liberal), Ed Broadbent (New Democratic), Lorne Reznowski (Social Credit)
Donald Stovel Macdonald (Liberal) 1982 - 1989
-82 (min.): Brian Mulroney (Prog. Conservative), Ed Broadbent (New Democratic), Martin Hattersley (Social Credit)
-84: Joe Clark (Prog. Conservative), Ed Broadbent (New Democratic), Rodrigue Biron (Parti national), Raymond Speaker (Social Credit)
-88 (min.): John Crosbie (Prog. Conservative), Ed Broadbent (New Democratic), Rodrigue Biron (Parti national), Raymond Speaker (Social Credit)
Jean Chrétien (Liberal) 1989 - 1993
-89: John Crosbie (Prog. Conservative), Ed Broadbent (New Democratic), Raymond Speaker (Social Credit), Rodrigue Biron (Parti national)
Brian Mulroney (Progressive Conservative) 1993 - 2002
-93: Dave Barrett (New Democratic), Jean Chrétien (Liberal)
-97 (min.): Sheila Copps (Liberal), Dave Barrett (New Democratic), Randy Thorsteinson (Social Credit), Svend Robinson (New Politics Initiative)
-99: Sheila Copps (Liberal), Bill Blaikie (New Democratic), Randy Thorsteinson (Social Credit)
André Bachand (Progressive Conservative) 2002 - 2003
Pierre Pettigrew (Liberal) 2003 - 2011
-03: André Bachand (Prog. Conservative), Bill Blaikie (New Democratic)
-07 (min.): Brian Pallister (Prog. Conservative), Bill Blaikie (New Democratic), Francois Legault (Parti national populaire)
-09 (min.): Jim Flaherty (Prog. Conservative), Svend Robinson (New Democratic), Francois Legault (Parti national populaire), David Chernushenko (Green)
Jim Flaherty (Progressive Conservative) 2011 - 2013
-2011 (min.): Pierre Pettigrew (Liberal), Francois Legault (Parti national populaire), Svend Robinson & David Chernushenko (New Democratic - Green Alliance)
Stéphane Dion (Liberal) 2013 -2015
-13 (min.): Jim Flaherty (Prog. Conservative), Francois Legault (Parti national populaire), Svend Robinson & David Chernushenko (New Democratic - Green Alliance)
Pierre Karl Péladeau (Progressive Conservative) 2015 - present
-15: Stéphane Dion (Liberal), Svend Robinson & David Chernushenko (New Democratic - Green Alliance), Francois Legault (Pati national populaire)
-19 (min.): Mark Holland (Liberal), Svend Robinson & David Merner (New Democratic - Green Alliance)
-21: Mark Holland (Liberal), Wab Kinew (New Democratic), Niki Ashton & David Merner (Socialist - Green Alliance)

 

[Kaddeus]

Pierre Karl Péladeau (Progressive Conservative) 2015 - present
-15: Stéphane Dion (Liberal), Svend Robinson & David Chernushenko (New Democratic - Green Alliance), Francois Legault (Pati national populaire)
-19 (min.): Mark Holland (Liberal), Svend Robinson & David Merner (New Democratic - Green Alliance)
-21: Mark Holland (Liberal), Wab Kinew (New Democratic), Niki Ashton & David Merner (Socialist - Green Alliance)

Merner in the same party as Ashton is wild.

 

[Time Enough]

Prime Ministers of Canada
Pierre Trudeau (Liberal) 1968 - 1978
-74: Robert Stanfield (Prog. Conservative), David Lewis (New Democratic), Réal Caouette (Social Credit)
Brian Mulroney (Progressive Conservative) 1978 - 1982
-78: Pierre Trudeau (Liberal), Ed Broadbent (New Democratic), Lorne Reznowski (Social Credit)
Donald Stovel Macdonald (Liberal) 1982 - 1989
-82 (min.): Brian Mulroney (Prog. Conservative), Ed Broadbent (New Democratic), Martin Hattersley (Social Credit)
-84: Joe Clark (Prog. Conservative), Ed Broadbent (New Democratic), Rodrigue Biron (Parti national), Raymond Speaker (Social Credit)
-88 (min.): John Crosbie (Prog. Conservative), Ed Broadbent (New Democratic), Rodrigue Biron (Parti national), Raymond Speaker (Social Credit)
Jean Chrétien (Liberal) 1989 - 1993
-89: John Crosbie (Prog. Conservative), Ed Broadbent (New Democratic), Raymond Speaker (Social Credit), Rodrigue Biron (Parti national)
Brian Mulroney (Progressive Conservative) 1993 - 2002
-93: Dave Barrett (New Democratic), Jean Chrétien (Liberal)
-97 (min.): Sheila Copps (Liberal), Dave Barrett (New Democratic), Randy Thorsteinson (Social Credit), Svend Robinson (New Politics Initiative)
-99: Sheila Copps (Liberal), Bill Blaikie (New Democratic), Randy Thorsteinson (Social Credit)
André Bachand (Progressive Conservative) 2002 - 2003
Pierre Pettigrew (Liberal) 2003 - 2011
-03: André Bachand (Prog. Conservative), Bill Blaikie (New Democratic)
-07 (min.): Brian Pallister (Prog. Conservative), Bill Blaikie (New Democratic), Francois Legault (Parti national populaire)
-09 (min.): Jim Flaherty (Prog. Conservative), Svend Robinson (New Democratic), Francois Legault (Parti national populaire), David Chernushenko (Green)
Jim Flaherty (Progressive Conservative) 2011 - 2013
-2011 (min.): Pierre Pettigrew (Liberal), Francois Legault (Parti national populaire), Svend Robinson & David Chernushenko (New Democratic - Green Alliance)
Stéphane Dion (Liberal) 2013 -2015
-13 (min.): Jim Flaherty (Prog. Conservative), Francois Legault (Parti national populaire), Svend Robinson & David Chernushenko (New Democratic - Green Alliance)
Pierre Karl Péladeau (Progressive Conservative) 2015 - present
-15: Stéphane Dion (Liberal), Svend Robinson & David Chernushenko (New Democratic - Green Alliance), Francois Legault (Pati national populaire)
-19 (min.): Mark Holland (Liberal), Svend Robinson & David Merner (New Democratic - Green Alliance)
-21: Mark Holland (Liberal), Wab Kinew (New Democratic), Niki Ashton & David Merner (Socialist - Green Alliance)

I have to say that a New Democratic - Green Alliance feels very possible and I’m surprised that it hasn’t actually occurred (I know this is because the Greens are aggressively contradictory in nature but still).

Also some Svend Robinson action is fun.

 

[Gorrister]

Also some Svend Robinson action is fun.

The Winona Ryder of Canadian politics...

 

[CanadianTory]